A fishy exuberance

Front cover

Hooray for Fish!  is nothing  but exuberant!   Written and illustrated by Lucy Cousins, the creator of Maisy Mouse, it is such a fun picturebook, with wonderfully bright illustrations and in her well known gouache style, of large blocks of colour outlined in black.  Cousins also does all the characteristic lettering by hand.  

The edition I have comes with a DVD read by Emilia Fox.  It's a nice addition to the picturebook, but certainly couldn't replace it. I love anything with fish in it, so I'm biased, but this is one of my favourites. 

Blue is predominant - it's an underwater setting after all!  But the blues are different in hue, some are baby blue others are more turquoise, and some pages are almost green.  It's nice to just flick through and see all the different shades. 

It's a concept book in rhyme, using colours and adjectives and some opposites, so for ELT that's a good reason to use it!  But to be honest share this one for the visually exciting experience it gives your young students, together with the lovely rhythmic text.  It's truely brilliant. 

Let's take a look at all the different bits.  Front and back cover are one big illustration, showing us a big spotty fish, in orange and yellow with stripy fins and tail.  Big fish is smiling at a little fish, who's just the same.  The blurb on the back reads: "Splosh, splash, splish! Hooray for fish! Swim with Little Fish and all his fishy friends in this splishy-spalshy riot of colour and rhyme under the sea." Let's go swimming then ...

Front endpapers

Splash... into the underworld.  The front endpapers show us the world Little Fish lives in, there's that baby blue and some very interesting sea plants and corals. Lovely.  No fish though. 

Title page and copyright

And here's Little Fish looking very tiny alongside the wavey plant.  He's turned to the right, the direction in which we have to turn the page to meet all his fishy friends. 

Opening 1

I love those sea plants, wavy and stripy and so colourful.  What a wonderful world Little Fish lives in. Let's meet some of his friends. 

Opening 2

Here are some of his colourful, funny friends.  Little Fish's world is full of diversity.  There are spotty fish and stripy fish, happy fish and grumpy fish, all clearly exactly that - the grumpy fish not only has a turned down mouth but he's brown and black, weighted down with a heavy head and small fins, nothing jovial about him at all.  Grumpy has become gripy in the US edition. 

Opening 5

Here's a nice page with the numbers decorating each fish, as though they have different scales.  Upon turning the page, the simplicity of three white fish is contrasted with a page full of multicoloured ones and enables small children to have fun with their counting, as well as discover some funny fish. Can you see two fruity fish?  

Opening 6

From here on Little Fish's world is ever more creative.  An ele-fish, a big grey fish with a trunk, a shelly fish, a sort of squid in a shell, Hairy fish and scary fish, and then ...

Opening 9

... these lovely rhyming fish!  No mistaking what these fish are!  On we swim, past fat fish and thin fish, twin fin-fin fish, two wonderfully colourful fish with large peacock-like fins and tails. "Curly whirly, twisty twirly ... "

Opening 13

"So many friends, so many fish, splosh, splash, splish!"  Leaf fish, horse fish, fishes with hearts and stars and peacock tails.  Long thin ones, spiky ones, flat ray like ones and sea plants with red heart shaped leaves... 

And then, little fish is suddenly all alone.  "Where's the one I love the best, even more than all the rest?" 

Opening 16

Here she is!  It's Mummy Fish! "Kiss, kiss, kiss, hooray for fish!"  And if we turn the page one more time, the back endpapers remind us just how exuberant this lovely book is!

Back endpapers

All the fish that Little Fish encountered are here on the back endpapers.  There's the ele-fish, and the twin fin-fin fish, the grumpy fish and the hairy fish.  All together with Little Fish and Mummy Fish.  It's really is a Hooray for Fish book!

Now how cool was that?  Children love it, and want it again and again.  They pick up the rhyming words really easily and  chant along with you as you share it with them.  And if you want you can do all sorts of fun arty activities related to fish.  Fishy underworld scenes, inventing wild and wonderful fish, making a daddy fish for Little Fish, and maybe even some brothers and sisters!  

There's a very complete set of activities on the Walker Books page which can be downloaded here and adapted for varied ELT contexts. 

If you haven't got the the DVD you can use the YouTube version of the film, and you and your children can tell the story when the music stops! The music is fun and calypso-like and accompanies Little Fish on his encounters with his fishy friends - trumpets sound when he meets the ele-fish and the music becomes slow and sad when he meets the grumpy fish.  

If you like Lucy Cousins you may also like an earlier post about the picturebook I'm the best.

I'm in love with ... me!

An inky squiggle by Lucy Cousins from I'm the Best!

And so to continue with the being-in-love theme, but in a quirky sort of way... I'd like to talk about I'm the Best, by Lucy Cousins.  I hope you are following!

Cousins is best known for her Maisy books, which she began creating twenty years ago. If you aren't familiar with her work, here's an interesting interview with her on the Book Trust website. 

I'm the Best is slightly different in style to the Maisy books we are all so familiar with.  When I got my copy a couple of weeks ago, I chuckled to myself as I turned the pages, quite amazed at this style I'd not seen her do before.  The Maisy books, and another of my favourites, Hooray for Fish (which I'll talk about one day), are usually illustrated against colourful backgrounds, with thick painted outlines, and bright primary colours.  But I'm the Best uses white to a maximum, leaving the backgrounds empty of colour washes.  And she uses ink instead of paint.  The inks give a sort of blotchy, wild effect, sort of off handish, making the final product look as though it's a collection of rough sketches, and almost child-like too: her outlines are done with a blasé-style black crayon.  On some of the pages she's let the paper soak up the inks and the result is a chance one.  They are lovely illustrations and children enjoy them too. 

I'm the Best is about dog, who thinks he's the best.  He has four friends who he loves, but that doesn't stop him telling them he can do things better than they can.   It turns out that they teach him a lesson, in a kind way, and he realises that it's important for everyone to have that 'I'm the best' feeling!   

The front cover introduces our main character, Dog, waving his arms and looking downright delighted with life! Endpapers are bright orange paper and provide a nice introduction to the blotchy inks that follow.  The copyright page is dotted with inky blobs, all extending waterlogged tendrils into the paper.  Makes me want to get some inks and have a go (and that is a possible post-picturebook activity). The title page also has our dog protagonist. The font is hand-written by Lucy Cousins - this is one of her trademarks - so it's uneven and irregular and adds to the spontaneous effect she cleverly creates. 

And so Dog is presented amongst flowers introducing himself as "... the best." 

Next spread shows us his friends, "Ladybird, Mole, Goose and Donkey", standing in a line, going from small to big. Dog loves his friends, "... they're brilliant", but he's the best!    It's a well balanced spread: the two sets of animals are facing each other, but the words separate them.  That's important.  

The following spreads show Dog being the best: running faster than Mole, "I won. I'm the best." Digging holes better than Goose, "I won. I'm the best." Being bigger than Ladybird, "I won. I'm the best." Swimming better than Donkey, "I won. I'm the best." What a exuberant expanse of water Cousins' has created. You can almost feel Donkey's splashes!

"I'm the best at everything", say's Dog.    Look at those 'I'm the best' squiggles: delightful! 

Poor Donkey, Goose, Mole and Ladybird.   They do look sad...

... they are sad, until they realise that in fact, Dog has got it wrong. Mole "can dig holes much longer and much deeper"; Goose  "can swim much faster"; Donkey is "much bigger", and of course Ladybird "can fly much better" than Dog.  So in fact his friends are much better than he is. Poor dog, his face gets more wretched, as we see his friends prove their worth.  In this last double spread, can you see the grey sky over Dog's head, in comparison to Ladybird's bright blue one? 

Dog realises he's "... rubbish at everything"; that he's a "... SHOW OFF". And so he apologizes to his friends. Well done Dog!  They hug and reassure him, "Don't worry.  You are the best at being our best friend. And you are the best at having beautiful fluffy ears.  And we love you", (the last line is slightly bigger for emphasis), and the five friends are hugging each other. 

A happy ending... with a twist - if we turn over, Dog is back to his old ways ... "Oh phew! Obviously having beautiful fluffy ears is the most important thing. So I AM the best."

Don't you ever learn Dog? 

A picturebook with a message which can be used with pre-school and primary.  It supports the development of emotional intelligence, providing children with visual evidence of feelings and emotions, helping them understand their own as well as others.  Quite brilliant!

And if you get the chance, do experiment with inks, kids will love the experience!